Alicia Bailey + Ravenpress Studio Notes

This book re-purposes pages from a collaborative project I worked on when I was actively involved (as visitor/volunteer) with a now  defunct therapeutic community (Cenikor).

Therapeutic communities are drug-free environments in which people with addictive (and other) problems live together in an organized  and structured way in order to promote change and make possible a drug-free life in the outside society. The therapeutic community forms  a miniature society in which residents, and staff in the role of facilitators, fulfill distinctive roles and adhere to clear rules, all designed to  promote the transitional process of the residents.

The original project was a game board made of sixteen 8 inch square paintings, each painting referencing an aspect of the TC system of  privileges and disciplines. Dissatisfied with some of the paintings, I dissembled the game board years ago and this week am turning it into  an accordion style book, using some of the phrases that used to be so familiar to me but now have lost their resonance.

The text was imaged via laser etching directly onto the canvas paintings, the pages hinged with acrylic tinted tyvek. The case cover is paste-cloth, the end pages paste paper.

The Colorado based Cenikor was closed in 2004; its demise due to internal abuses of residents and staff of the sort the program was  designed to help clients recover from. With three facilities still operating, Cenikor’s 24-36 month program is one of the toughest TC’s to  graduate from. A clear majority of the residents are there by court order, few are able to successfully transition into drug and crime free  lives.

My awareness of this particular TC began when my older brother was given an opportunity to go through the Cenikor program as an alternative to prison. Cenikor hosted a weekly open house, when approved family members and friends were allowed to come visit for two hours every Saturday evening. I remember many a Saturday driving over, listening to the local jazz station’s Saturday night blues hour en route.

It was tough watching the slow, agonizing and too often unsuccessful process of addicts struggling against odds so clearly stacked against them; working to re-build their lives on crumbling foundations, so much already lost to them. It was tough watching the visiting families, my own included, holding on to shreds of hope that their loved one would be one of the few to ‘make it’.

My volunteerism was limited to helping some of the residents apply for, and happily be granted, amnesty from outstanding IRS debts, thus helping to eliminate one of the many anxieties living responsibly entails.

This is taken from the frontspiece of the book:

In 1967, a group of inmates in a Colorado state penitentiary, who were committed to breaking the cycle of substance abuse and the criminal behavior that supports their addictions, established Cenikor, a residential therapeutic community.

Therapeutic communities typically employ a system of phases, privileges and disciplines  for their residents (clients) in order to promote change and make possible a drug-free life in the outside society. The therapeutic community forms a miniature society in which residents, and staff in the role of facilitators, fulfill distinctive roles and adhere to clear rules, all designed to promote the transitional process of the residents.

In 2004 the Colorado facility, the original Cenikor, shut down operations following the suspension of the nonprofit group’s license by the Colorado Department of Human Services because of alleged improprieties.

Complaints included the manufacture of methamphetamines on site, prostitution, intimate involvement of staffers with female clients and welfare fraud.  
Three other Cenikor facilities, in Texas and Louisiana, still operate.

My father (Tom Bailey) and his aunt, the woman who raised him (he was orphaned at 9), were both born in September. He was born on  September 15, 1929 and died in 2006. His aunt Ruth was born on September 23, 1899 and died in December of 1998.

I don’t know if it is related to their birth dates, but over the years I’ve noticed that thoughts of them both surface  more in the fall than during other times of year. 
I like to think about them both. They are the two in my family whose personality traits my own are most akin to.  Intelligent, educated, filled with curiosity, fascinated with the physical world, and introverted. Ruth was  passionate about the organic structure of the world she knew and studied biology. Tom studied the physical  structure of objects and relationships between them and became a mechanical engineer. I find solace in the  handling and manipulation of objects and became an artist. I have an archive rich with objects belonging to them  both and often include items from those archives in my personal studio work.

As most parent/child relationships are, my relationship with my father was a complex one, and one that shifted  throughout the years. He knew me most of my life. I say most of because he suffered from dementia in has later  years and wasn’t at all sure who I was for the last bit.

He, like me, was socially awkward, and although he had a brilliant and creative mind, was filled with self-doubt. He relished his solitude and appreciated the life of experience and sensation as well as the life of the mind. He was filled with emotions he seemed fearful of expressing.

Ruth, whether by character or social constraints of the time, also had difficulty expressing the love she felt. I think of my dad as emotionally tone-deaf. Do I think of myself in this same way? Sometimes.

So this week I made a book/assemblage from an astronomy book that moved from Ruth’s house to mine when she died. The unbound pages are collaged boards; recessed areas hold images of both Ruth and my father overlaid with mica. Each page has two circular cut outs that allow them to fit over round wooden assemblages attached to the inside covers of the book. The book is primarily, but not entirely, built from the original Astronomy book. The assemblages built with items and materials from both Ruth and Tom’s archives.